Of course he already knew. And the Lik’em representative, shaggy-burly Lorg, summed it up.

“What’ll we eat? Nomorts and Lik’ems and even Zooms gotta be fed. And I know Besh and the others won’t take kindly to eatin’ Rowan Bean gruel.”

Lorg had been picking slices of pepperoni and chunks of sausage off nearby pizzas, even sniffing-at – then devouring – stringy lengths of cheese. I could tell that he was torn, both liking the alien food and longing for raw meat.

That is when the idea dawned on me.

“It won’t have to be gruel! With our slurry tech, we can reformat complex organic molecules into very realistic steaks,” I nodded to Lorg, then at Earl Dragonlord, “or streams of hot, delicious blood, or healthy protein shakes for Standards…”

“Or braains?” slurped the head of Moulder, which Sully had propped at the edge of the conference table.

“Or brains,” I conceded. “Organically it can have the very same taste, texture and nutritional value. There’s just one problem.” I nodded to Guts, and he stepped in.

“The process can’t convert from dirt or air or raw elements. We’d need a rich feedstock of organics – almost any kind of carbohydrate – to feed into the fab units.”

“Where would we get those?” Fu Tichi asked.

“Well, one ideal method would be to mine local asteroids for organic feedstock,” Talon mused. “Though it’ll be expensive, at first. We would have to set up self-replicating factories to exploit the right metallic rocks, use them to build more factories, then find other kinds of carbo-rich roids to feed into the slurry tubes we’d set up, above each city.” He consulted a tablet. “Unless the FAW was willing to send a fleet of pricey freighters all the way out here at the rim of known space… we’re talking at least twenty, maybe thirty years.”

Earl shook his head. “Speaking on behalf of the planet’s Nomort population, let me assure you that so long a thirst would be intolerable.”

Captain Ohm had been busy while others spoke, finally changing into a fresh uniform with three spiral galaxies on the collar. His yeoman assistant took the local shirt and jacket he had been wearing and shook them once, releasing clouds of dust, provoking from her the dainty chirp that passes – among demmies – for a sneeze.

Ohm waved away at the cloud of white powder… then glanced at me with wide eyes, which set off a sudden competition, each of us racing to blurt first—

“The dessert!” we shouted in unison.

“What? The chocolate is here?” Cuspitui yowled hopefully.

“No!” Ohm glanced defiantly at me and I chose to clam up as he continued alone. “The sugar-sand waste that we crossed, in order to get here. Hundreds of thousands – millions – of hectares of sweet carbs!”

“Of course,” Guts yelped. “That should supply all the raw material we’ll need for decades, maybe centuries!”